Senate has threatened that it would publish names of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the federal government, MDAs that have been indicted by its Committee on Public Accounts following the queries raised by office of the Auditor General for the Federation. The Senate after the presentation and consideration of the Senator Matthew Urhoghide, led Committee on Public Accounts which probed the report of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGoF) on the audited accounts for the year 2015 ( Part 1 & 2), indicted 59 MDAs out of the 114 agencies that were queried. While the Committee vacated 46 queries of agencies, in all, a total of 84 government agencies appeared before the Senate Panel, just as 21 MDAs made only written submissions without appearing before the Senate panel; 7 others completely refused to appear before the panel and defend their expenses.
Speaking after the consideration of the report, President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan who urged the Committee to return with an executive summary of his report on the queries raised by the Auditor-General of the Federation, vowed that the MDAs will be exposed to the public through the publication of their names. Meanwhile, Senator Urhoghide has vowed that any MDA without the audited report will be sent away from the 2020 Budget defence, just as he said that the National Assembly will not appropriate and when it is time to defend how the money was spent, they fail to appear. According to him, the Senate will make it mandatory for MDAs to show evidence of their Audited Financial Account for the previous year(s) before they are allowed to present and defend any new budget. Irked by actions of the MDAs, behaviour, Lawan said that those indicted and have refused to provide explanation to their spending of public funds have no business occupying such positions.
Lawan said “This is one of our major responsibilities as a Parliament to hold the executive to account and whoever is given the responsibility and the trust of running any agency with public funds must be accountable to the Parliament on behalf of the people. You have indicated a certain number of MDAs who failed to come to the Committee after invitation. I want you to go through your documents, the invitation letters or the reminders, this Senate will publish the names of these agencies for the public to know. This Senate will insist any public servant or civil servant that is given public fund for public good and has questions to answer and refuse to appear to answer should have no business in government because all of us are supposed to be accountable to the people. Therefore, if someone thinks that he is not going to be accountable then that person has no business remaining in office. I want to also say that those who turned up to defend or explain interrogations by the Auditor General did the right thing and we must commend them for coming whether they were able to convince the Committee that the Auditor General was not right or not, they appeared responsible and accountable.”
Presenting the report, Urhoghide said that a number of late submission of annual financial statement by most of the government agencies had to be seriously addressed to enhance the auditing system in the country. According to him, other bottlenecks include: reckless withdrawal by the executive arm of government from Special Fund Accounts other than for the purpose they were created; lack of cooperation between the office of the Auditor-General and the Office of the Accountant-General- two key agencies involved in the management and supervision of public funds. He also identified a wide spread of unwholesome financial reports by key revenue generating agencies as major constraint to effective and efficient auditing process. He said, ” In the course of the consideration of the Auditor’s Report, the Committee observed and noted issues that warrant urgent Parliamentary and Executive attention to enable our audit process attain its goals and also, operate in accordance with the African Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI) and International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) benchmarks. The observations include but not limited to;
” Consistent contravention of relevant Constitutional provisions and other Extant Laws by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. This includes late submission of Annual Financial Statement. This practice is a violation of the provisions of Section 49 (1) and (2) of Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) 2007and Section 85 (5) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Withdrawals of funds by the executive arm from Special Fund Accounts for purposes other than the obj ectives the funds were created, and without recourse to the National Assembly for authorisation. Such were contrary to Section 80 (4) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigerian amended. Absence of collaboration amongst the two key agencies involved the management and superintending over of public funds that is, the Office of the Auditor-General and the Office of the Accountant-General. Such attitude of inter-agency lack of co-operarion constitutes a barrier to efficient, effective, economic and transparent audit process of the Nation’s Federation Account and accordingly gives room for negative corruption perception index, thereby rubbishing Government efforts in fighting grafts in the society.
“Habitual late or non-submission of financial reports to the Office of the AccountantGeneral of the Federation by MDAs. Prevalence of unwholesome financial practices by some principal revenue Agencies which have negative implications on the revenue generation efforts of government. Deliberate delay in the submission of financial transcripts by the Accountant-General of the Federation to the Auditor-General for the Federation. The Committee Views this as a conscious effort at undermining the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation and by extension, the supreme law of the land. The need for MDAs and the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation to ensure that prOper and conclusive exit conferences take place at the end of every audit exercise to eliminate avoidable disagreements. Also, urgent need to pass the Audit Service Bill into law, to strengthen and streamline the audit process with a view to ensuring prudence in public finance and transactions.”
